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Policy on prior publication

When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record. 

English language editing services 

Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.  

In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.

Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal. 

Competing Interests

All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. 

Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”. 

Authorship and contributorship

All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.

Author affiliations

Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated. 

For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.

Supplementary materials

Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary materials. Supplementary materials will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary materials may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.

Supplementary materials will be published with the same metadata as your parent article, and are considered a formal part of the academic record, so cannot be retracted or modified other than via our article correction processes. Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please make sure you are familiar with our detailed guidance on supplementary materials prior to submission.

Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.

Author Hub

You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.

GENERAL GUIDELINES

Articles should be written in English. Submitted articles that require major editing to improve the standard of English are unlikely to be accepted. Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the editor and any reviewers. We list a number of third-party services specialising in language editing and/or translation, and suggest that authors contact as appropriate: www-cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com/core/services/authors/language-services

Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge Core published journal.

Articles should be in the region of 4,000 – 6,000 words. Shorter pieces for the Comment section of the journal should be in the region of 2,000 words.

All submitted work should be set in Times New Roman font 12 point, with the exception of the title (14 point) and footnotes (10 point). The body of the text should be 1.5 line spaced. The abstract and footnotes should be single line spaced. Footnote references should be appear as consecutive superscript numbers in the text.

Charges apply for all colour figures that appear in the print version of the journal. At the time of submission, contributors should clearly state whether their figures should appear in colour in the online version only, or whether they should appear in colour online and in the print version. There is no charge for including colour figures in the online version of the Journal but it must be clear that colour is needed to enhance the meaning of the figure, rather than simply being for aesthetic purposes. If you request colour figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on our behalf to collect Author Charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.

The title and the author’s name should be in capitals and the author’s post or title in italics on a separate line:

FAMOUS CONSISTORY COURT CASES

MARK HILL QC

Chancellor of the Diocese of Chichester

The derivation of any paper or any acknowledgments should be stated as a footnote appended to the author’s name.

SUB-HEADINGS

Any sub-headings should be flush to the left hand margin and in capitals. Secondary headings should be lower case (except for the initial letter) and bold.

PARAGRAPH STYLE

The body of the text should be aligned left, with an indentation at the beginning of each paragraph and no line break between paragraphs.

QUOTATIONS

A lengthy quotation (more than about 40 words) should be in a single block of indented text without inverted commas, preceded and followed by a single blank line. Italics used for emphasis should be noted in the footnotes (not in the text) with the words ‘emphasis in original’ or ‘emphasis added’.

Shorter quotations should come within the text within single inverted commas. Double inverted commas should only be used for a quotation within a quotation.

LISTS

Lists should appear as follows:

i. First tier lists should be numbered in roman numerals, aligned with the left hand margin;

ii. Points should follow sequentially with each point beginning with a capital letter and ending in a semi colon;

iii. If there are to be sub-lists within a list they should appear as follows:

a. lower case letters are to be used;

b. otherwise the style is as above.

iv. The last point in a list ends in a full stop.

GENERAL POINTS AND CONVENTIONS

i. Full stops should be followed by a single space;

ii. Footnotes should appear outside (and not within) punctuation markings;

iii. Spellings should follow British English usage, except for quoted matter. ‘ise’ and ‘yse’ endings should be used;

iv. The serial or ‘Oxford’ comma (ie the one after ‘white’ in ‘red, white, and blue’) is not used;

v. Possessive apostrophes should not be followed by ‘s’ after names ending in ‘s’ unless the names are of one syllable (eg Jesus’, Finnis’, Rawls’s);

vi. Excessive use of capitals should be avoided – thus ‘holy orders’ and ‘chancellor’, ‘the Archbishop of Canterbury’ but ‘the role of an archbishop’;

vii. Capital letters should be used for divine pronouns;

viii. ‘Church’ takes a capital letter when referring to the universal Church or the title of a particular Church, but lower case when referring to a church building;

ix. Dates are to be given as 12 February 2011;

x. Spans of years and numbers should be given in full without elision (eg 1914–1918, pp 221–235), separated by an en-rule and not a hyphen;

xi. Numbers are generally written out in full up to ten, and then in figures thereafter. Discussions including numbers below and above ten should all be in figures. Numbers above 1,000 should have appropriate commas (eg 12,000, 1,000,000);

xii. Page numbers should read p 12 or pp 17-23 without full stops;

xiii. Abbreviations may be used for brevity, but sparingly. They should be introduced in brackets at first mention (eg ‘the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)’);

xiv. Full stops in abbreviations are not used. Names should be rendered MrM Hill QC or the Revd DrWill Adam but titles and post-nominal letters should only be used where necessary (eg QC or for religious orders (OP, OSB etc)). Abbreviations such as eg, ie, ibid, para and p are not followed by full stops, neither are they italicised;

xv. Italics should be used for foreign language phrases where they do not occur regularly in common parlance (thus mutatis mutandis is italicised, but not prima facie);

xvi. Accents should only be used sparingly and where necessary and, if used, should be used on capitals (eg Ladislas Örsy, Michał Rynkowski);

xvii. References to canons should be for the Church of England: Canon A 3, Canon B 43(1)(b). For the Roman and Eastern Catholic Churches, indicate which code is being referred to: Code of Canon Law 1983 Canon 87; Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches Canon 681 §1. Abbreviations (eg CIC, CCEO) may be used if there are frequent references;

xviii. References to web urls should be written out in full between <> brackets and with a date of access inserted. eg <www.charity- commission.gov.uk/library/equality_act_summary.pdf>, accessed24 September 2011. Please avoid sending documents with active hyperlinks;

REFERENCES

References are very important and it is vital that they are both accurate and rendered exactly in house style. The primary function of references is to allow readers to find further information. The process of correcting references can lead to delays in publication.

Single- and multi-author books

WAdam, Legal Flexibility and the Mission of the Church: dispensation and economy in ecclesiastical law (Farnham, 2011), p 35.

P Rodopoulos, An Overview of Orthodox Canon Law (Rollinsford NH, 2007), pp 109-10.

Please note:

i. The author’s first initial only is given (no middle initials and first names) and there is no full-stop after initials;

ii. The publisher’s name is not used;

iii. Standard US State abbreviations are used for US places of publication;

iv. Subsequent references should use the shor

Chapters in edited volumes and articles in journals

R Ombres, ‘Ecclesiology, ecumenism and canon law’ in N Doe,M Hill and R Ombres (eds), English Canon Law (Cardiff, 1998), pp 48- 59, p 51.

R Trigg, ‘Religion in the public forum’, (2011) 13 Ecc LJ 274-286, p 275.

N Doe, ‘The positivist thesis in fifteenth-century legal theory and practice’ (1990) Journal of Legal History, 11:1, pp 29-39.

Nb titles of journals, unless very well known, should be written out in full for the sake of clarity. Abbreviations of well known journals should be set in Roman rather than italic type (eg CLJ, Crim LR).

Any reference to the Ecclesiastical Law Journal is rendered (2012) 14 Ecc LJ 161.

Cases

UK Cases

O’Reilly v Mackman [1983] 2 AC 237 at 278D.

Re St Mary, Longdon (2011) 13 Ecc LJ 370.

McFarlane v Relate Avon Ltd [2010] EWCA Civ 880 at para 21.

NB neutral citations are preferred (eg EWHC, EWCA, UKSC) and paragraph references should be indicated with ‘para’ rather than with square brackets.

European Cases

For cases in the European Court of Human Rights, as follows:

Balogh v Hungary App no 47940/99 (ECtHR, 20 July 2004);

or, for older cases,

Johnston v Ireland (1986) Series A no 122.

Again, paragraph numbers should be cited using ‘para’.

Cases in the European Court of Justice and decisions of the European Commission should use the relevant neutral citation.

Older Cases

Cases from before1865 should be cited using conventions found in OSCOLA using both nominal and English Reports citations where available and, for earlier cases, yearbook references. eg:

Procurator General v Stone (1808) 1 Hagg Con 424, 161 ER 604.

Statutes,Measures and Statutory Instruments

Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533;

Human Rights Act 1998, s 5(1);

Churchwardens Measure 2001;

The Dangerous Dogs (Designated Types) Order 1991, SI 1991/1743

Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)

HC Deb [or HL Deb] date, volume, column.

So, eg,

HC Deb 4 July 1996, vol 280, col 505W.

HL Deb 12 November 2009, vol 714, col 893.

Websites and other online material

‘Registration of civil partnerships, same sex marriage and related issues’, available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/09/05..., accessed 29 April 2012.

N Schneider, ‘Searching for the legitimate secular: Löwith, Blumenberg Asad’,December 2006, http://www.therowboat.com/papers/LegitimateSecular... p 5, accessed 31 May 2012.